Tuition payment during a pandemic; Gloves and masks

Abstract

At times, financial loss is the result of a person’s malfeasance or nonfeasance and the issue to be adjudicated is whether or not an act or the omission of an act results in liability of one type or another. At other times, loss is the result of an accident, an “act of God” or bad luck (mazlakh garam). The descriptive talmudic categorization of no-fault loss is “His fi eld became fl ooded.” ¶ The latter aphorism expresses a “tip of the iceberg” reflection of a rather unique Jewish law regarding definition of property. It is almost de rigueur for professors who teach first-year law school courses in Property to begin the semester with a pronouncement that “Property is a bundle of rights.” The value of property lies in the use or uses to which a property owner can put his property. Of what use is property that cannot be enjoyed? Remember Midas and his mythical touch. If everything that one touches turns to gold, one would soon starve to death. In the annals of Halakhah there is a celebrated controversy with regard to whether there is proprietorship, even in a theoretical sense, in issurei hana’ah, i.e., property from which it is forbidden to derive any benefit whatsoever.1 (from Introduction)